JUSIPER

 
Prorogue

Posted by Sini

It's a word more easily understood by French or Spanish speakers. But now everyone in Canada knows it.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has obtained Governor-General Michaëlle Jean's consent to temporarily shut down Parliament, a move that allows him to avoid a confidence vote next week that he was expected to lose.

It's a blow for the Liberal-NDP coalition, backed by the separatist Bloc Québécois, that was seeking to replace the minority Conservative goverment.

The development buys time for Mr. Harper to assemble an economic package that he hopes will discourage the multiparty alliance from taking him down at that time.

Well, that's one way to look at it. Here's another:

Now we find out if the Conservatives are a real party.

Replacing leaders is not a decision to be taken lightly. But if Conservatives are not at least seriously discussing the replacement of Stephen Harper before Parliament returns on Jan. 26, he truly has succeeded in creating a cult of personality.

Conservatives assuredly owe Harper a debt of gratitude for turning them from a messy coalition of old Reformers and Progressive Conservatives into a credible national government. But looking at his performance over the past few months, he's performed so badly that it's verged on the self-destructive.

This is a Prime Minister who called an early election to win a majority government, and failed utterly to make a case for what he would do with it. One who ran against one of the weakest Liberal leaders in history, while the Liberals were bleeding votes to the NDP, and had his campaign more or less match Stephane Dion's blunder for blunder. One who returned to Parliament with the consolation prize of a minority, and managed to almost immediately lose it based on a blunder that made Joe Clark look like a strategic genius by comparison.

Harper has, in many ways, put his party in position to win - not just a minority government here and there, but to be Canada's strongest federal party for a sustained period. But he now stands as the biggest barrier to that outcome. His personality is not conducive to either leading a minority government or winning a majority one. And he's so prone to tactical overreaches that it's only a matter of time until he puts his party further into a hole. [...]

The question is whether this party exists in anything approaching its current form without Harper at the helm, since he and a tight circle of trusted strategists and fixers control virtually all of its operations. But it's something Conservatives are going to have to test at some point, and Harper has made a very convincing case that they should do it sooner than later.

The Governor-General has, at considerable expense to parliamentary democracy, allowed Harper to basically shut down the government to save his own skin. That's a reprieve for him. It's an opportunity for his party.

2:16 PM |